About

“I began training as a landscape architect back in 1983 at Leeds Polytechnic. With strong connections to the art school, we were encouraged to blur boundaries between art and design, and sketching was taught as our primary communication tool. In Autumn 1983 one of the founding members of the Landscape Institute, Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe presented lecture. He reflected that whilst currently at the grand age of ninety-three, it wasn’t until he was around sixty years old that he felt satisfied with this designing.

As it becomes my turn to become sixty years of age, I am taking the opportunity to acknowledge the role of sketching, illustration and image making across forty years of creativity”.

Born in Bristol in 1965, Jim spent most of his formative years on the Donegal coast of Ireland. His childhood play space was defined by how far he could walk or run, and then return home, in a day. This freedom of movement across wild landscape, dotted with pre-Christian archaeological spaces infuses his current work, and that of his major past-time, running.

Fascinated with both movement and stillness, Jim’s work explores the spaces between these states, the liminal zones within which contradictions can exist. Jim is fascinated by our connection to the rhythm’s and patterns of cultural time frames, the internal body clock and nature’s seasonality. Within each artwork it is hoped to reveal moments of deeper understanding, of either special places or our personal journey. 

Initially training as a landscape architect at Leeds Polytechnic (1983 to 1990), Jim later emerged out of private practise as a renowned labyrinth-maker and artist, working on exciting and ambitious installation and labyrinth projects. 

Jim is based in Dumfriesshire, South West Scotland, setting his studio practise within a rural landscape backdrop, with the Solway Firth providing a maritime quality of light.

Jim Buchanan is author of “Labyrinths for the Spirit” published by Gaia in 2007.